Is my powerbook a goner?

[anotherjeff]

Hi all,
So I dropped my powerbook about 10 days ago. I figure no problem, it was in my bag and in a case. But it came out all dented to hell. I backed it up right then.

It's been working fine until today when it gives me a screen that says to reset after about 5-10 minutes. Genius bar thinks it's a loose airport card and I can't seem to replicate the problem after they touch it so I think all is good.

I take it home and starts to reset again, every 5-10 minutes, doesn't seem to like running applications. It's fine if I leave it alone.

I ran tech tools and It couldn't do the harddrive buffer tests.
I have a PB 12" 1.33 ghz, 1.25gb ram, 60gb harddrive.

Any suggestions? Just replace the harddrive?

Oh, and it did this too:

 

[iBookG4user]

Try running the Apple Hardware Test, that should tell you what the problem is.

 

[iHerzeleid]

Did you check that the RAM is seated well?

 

[anotherjeff]

Did you check that the RAM is seated well?

i would if i could unsrew the dang panel

 

[anotherjeff]

Ran hardware test, it was the ram chip. Had to go to the genius bar to open up the memory area since the screws were in too tight and I didn't want to strip them. Pulled out the ram, put it back in and I'm going strong.

Thank you MR for feeling my pain.

 

[aquajet]

I ran tech tools and It couldn't do the harddrive buffer tests.

It's been a while since I used tech tool. Does it report some sort of error? Any further odd behavior or data corruption could be related to this. Keep your backups current, but I'm certain you already know that.

 

[anotherjeff]

Now this is happening

So I thought everything was okay but now I can't open up word or tech tools. I get this funky error:

I tried repairing permissions but that didn't help. Restarting didn't help either.

Any ideas?

 

[motulist]

If I were you (and I'm not like most people), first I'd make absolutely super sure that I had a valid recent backup of my entire disk, then I'd reformat the drive and do a fresh install of OS X and rebuild from the ground up and do fresh installs of all your software from their respective original installer disks. I'm not saying thats necessarily the best course of action for you or most people, but it would 99% determine if the problem is in the hardware or software, and it's nice to have a freshly rebuilt system once every few years.

 

[anotherjeff]

Yeah, I was hoping to put it off for a few weeks since I'm taking the bar in less than two week and didn't want to put in the couple of hours.

Also, some of the other threads related to this problem said that they couldn't do a full reinstall because other errors occurred. I do have a backup so I'm not too worried, I just won't have the funds for a new computer until November and I want to hold out until then.

 

[anotherjeff]

Here's the latest thing:
I started up my laptop in target mode and tried to repair the harddrive using another laptop through disk utility.

It didn't work. I'm gonna probably try to reinstall tiger and if that fails, put in a new hd I guess.

 

[anotherjeff]

Curiouser and curiouser. I did a clean install of Tiger, ran all the system updates. Had one grey screen of death but all has been fine since then. Tech tools didn't find any problems.

But now the 1gb stick of ram is only reading as being 512mb. Say what? Does ram go bad? I guess I'll look for a replacement.

 

[KD7IWP]

Did you run Tech tool deluxe (The one that comes with Applecare)? Or did you use Tech tool pro. You can get Tech tool Pro for super cheap with the macheist bundle right now. I would try pulling out the ram and inserting it again, or swap slots if you have more than one chip and see if that one chip still doesn't respond.

 

[devman]

So I thought everything was okay but now I can't open up word or tech tools. I get this funky error:

I tried repairing permissions but that didn't help. Restarting didn't help either.

Any ideas?

That looks like it might be the Quicktime 7.2 and Carbon CFM apps incompatibility that some are experiencing. There are threads at macfixit and apple discussions on this with some workarounds.

 

[iToaster]

Back up... reinstall... rebuild. Well, you could always get a new Mac. Just curious but can I see the dent as well?

 

[anotherjeff]

Nothing too bad, there are definitely some way worse cases out there.

I had to take the cover off the battery because it no longer fits. I hope to get my new hard drive from OWC soon even if it is an unnecessary upgrade since all appears to be stable for now.

 

[motulist]

It sounds like maybe your RAM module is partially broken or isn't fully seated in its slot, so sometimes the system can access the ram where it expects it and sometimes it cannot, which would lead to all the weird errors you've been seeing. Open up the ram area and look for damage by visually inspecting the ram modules and the ram slots. Then reseat the ram modules, making sure they are fully in their slots which takes more force than you'd imagine, and see if the problem clears up. If not, take out 1 of the 2 ram modules and see if you have any problems, and if the problems persist, swap the modules so you're only running on the 2nd module sitting in the other slot than you used in the first test and see if that clears up the problem.

If the problem persists after that then you've ruled out a ram hardware issue.